Influence of the Charge Relay Effect on the Silanol Condensation Reaction as a Model for Silica Biomineralization

The catalytic effect of various sequential peptides for silica biomineralization has been studied. In peptide sequence design, lysine (K) and histidine (H) were selected as the standard amino acids and aspartic acid (D) was selected to promote the charge relay effects, such as in the enzyme active site. Therefore, homopolypeptides (K(10) and H(10)), block polypeptides (K(5)D(5) and H(5)D(5)), and alternate polypeptides [(KD)(5) and (HD)(5)] were designed, and the dehydration reaction ability of trimethylethoxysilane was investigated as a quantitative model of silica mineralization. The catalytic activity per basic residue of alternate polypeptide was the highest because of the charge relay effects at the surface of the peptide. In silica mineralization using tetraethoxysilane, spherical silica particles were obtained, and their size is related to the catalytic activities of the peptides in the model systems. From these results, the effect of the functional group combination by the peptide sequence design enables the control of the efficiency of mineralization and preparation of specific inorganic materials.